[feedback] User interface polish

[GreenCarrots]

In a recent recent post, another user expressed concern that the direction of the game's development is prioritizing breadth over refinement of existing features. While the original author did not give specifics, I think he has valid point. I have felt similarly in my own time playing the game and as a result starting collecting notes on the pain-points that I felt. The previous user's post inspired me to expand these notes into this post.

To be clear, I have greatly enjoyed the game and very much want it to succeed; WR:SR is the sort of hybrid city-builder/economic simulation that I have often dreamed about in the past. However, in my opinion features and breadth (e.g. new industry chains and vehicles) have taken too much precedence over refining the the core user interaction on which game is built. An efficient interface should facilitate the user accomplishing common tasks with the minimal effort (as measured in time, number of clicks, or inches of cursor motion); in this area the game could use a great amount of improvement.

Editorial note: I have split this post into several replies below due to Steam's unfortunate post-length limit.

[GreenCarrots]

Themes for improvement

Below I will give a few major themes of problems that I have observed, and then turn my attention to examples of common in-game tasks which are currently unduly onerous and provide some suggestions on how to improve the status quo. It's important to note that nearly all of these tasks are about user interface design; very few are about the game content or mechanics. Each of these are problems that I (and I suspect most players) encountered many times per hour of gameplay. As such, I think the pay-off to addressing these is quite high.

Overly "map-centric" interface

In the game, it is often necessary to select in-game items; specifically, consider these situations:

• selecting a stop to add to a number of lines
  
• choosing a destination residential building where citizens should be moved
  
• selecting a gravel source for a construction office

The selection is made by finding and clicking on the game item on the map (that is, the primary viewport, not the collapsible "mini-map").

This map-centric interface makes it difficult to quickly operate on groups of items, particularly items separated by large distances. For instance, when setting up construction offices one spends a considerable amount of time searching for and selecting material sources.

To address this I would suggest a simple yet powerful change: Clicking on an item's window (or perhaps a UI element in the window) should be equivalent to selecting the item on the map. The window should in a sense "symbolize" the map item which it describes. This greatly eases the above tasks by allowing the user to pull out a "working set" objects which their current task demands they work with and allow efficient interaction with the items in that set.

Almost exclusively mouse-driven interface

A theme that runs throughout the current interface is the need to perform repetitive, often error-prone, actions. Even worse, the interface provides no ability to bind keyboard shortcuts (beyond binding items to keys using the bar at the top of the interface), meaning that such actions are almost exclusively carried out by mouse.

Not only is mouse-exclusive interaction inefficient, but it severely limits play-time for users who struggle with RSI. I have personally had to curtail my playing for this reason.


In general, the developers would be well-advised to study the case of Factorio for an example of how keyboard and mouse interaction can complement one another to efficiently accomplish game tasks. Of course, WR:SR poses its own challenges, having a breadth of actions far larger than that of Factorio. More concretely, there are a variety of actions which badly need key bindings:

• Minimize the current window
  
• Destroying an open notification
  
• Opening the most recent notification
  
• Switching window focus
  
• Rename currently focused item
  
• Centering the view on the currently focused item

In addition, there are also a number of context-specific actions which are needed frequently enough to warrant bindings:

• Build with Rubles/Dollars
  
• Adding/removing a stop to a vehicle/line
  
• Send to depot

Of course, this is just a small fraction of the overall palette of actions in the game and there likely aren't enough keys on the keyboard to cover them all (and even if there were, the average player would not be able to remember them). Determining which actions deserve key-bindings and how to assign them memorably is not an easy task (perhaps a self-documenting modal scheme -- e.g. assigning fixed keys to the top row of buttons in the item window -- would be appropriate). This will need some reflection, ideally by someone with experience with user interface design.

Lack of "bulk" operations

In general, it would be helpful to a mechanism for copying bits of configuration and applying to another object. Another source of clicking is line management. There are a few contexts where this may be applicable:

• Copying/pasting CO assignments from one construction site onto another
  
• Copying the "load/unload" configuration from one stop of a line/vehicle to another
  
• Copying the "load/unload" configuration from one DO stop to another

Additionally, bulk operations on the map would be very helpful. Being able to fund/cancel contract of/assign COs to a group of construction sites (e.g. using region selection like the current path upgrade function) would greatly ease construction management

Finally, it would be great if (eventually) the Clone tool would be a bit more robust and gain the ability to be preserved as blueprints.

Make it easier to quickly locate items

In my experience, I often find myself wondering where a particular game item mentioned in a window (e.g. a vehicle in a building's related vehicle list) currently sits. Currently this is a task that requires at least three clicks. For instance, say I have opened the window of a distribution office and want to quickly get a sense of where its associated vehicles are located. Currently, this would require:

1. Double-click on a vehicle in the DO's vehicle list
   
2. Move the cursor to the vehicle's window
   
3. Click on the "eye" button

To address this, I would suggest defining a short-cut for this action. For instance, Ctrl-clicking on UI element that "symbolizes" a game item (e.g. a vehicle in the related vehicle list or the "magnifying" glass icon of an entry in a DO's task list) should center the view on that item.

Visibility of game state

WR:SR has a lot of relevant game state; conveying this state to user in a consumable form at the right time is a daunting task. In many cases the game already does a respectable job at this. However, there are a few areas where things can be improved.

Window focus state is not clear

The active window is part of the game state (affecting, e.g., which buildings are highlighted in the case of a CO) however this state is not clearly conveyed in the window's visual representation. It is typical for windowing systems to convey this through the styling of a window's title bar. It would make sense for the game to follow this model.

Consistently highlighting related items

Game items often participate in one-to-many relations. For instance,

• COs can be assigned construction sites
  
• DOs can be assigned sources/sinks
  
• Lines can be assigned stops
  
• Vehicles can be assigned to lines
  
• Vehicles can be heading to buildings
  
• Vehicles can belong to COs and DOs
  
• Fields can be assigned to agro-farms

Today, the game will highlight items related to the focused window's associated item. However, this is not consistent, nor is this treatment symmetric (e.g. selecting an agro-farm should highlight its fields, selecting a field should highlight its assigned agro-farm).

It would be useful if all of these relationships were shown by way of highlighting in a symmetric manner. Moreover, it would be helpful if there were a command (perhaps a keyboard binding?) configure the map such that all highlighted entities are on-screen.

The "lines" concept appears to be a second-class citizen

Several building types display a "related vehicles" list in their building window. However, I find that I generally name lines, not vehicles (as the latter tends to be repetitous). Showing the "related lines" of a building (probably in addition to "related vehicles") would be more useful for my style of gameplay.

Likewise, it is extremely easy to inadvertently break a vehicle's line assignment by carelessly adding or removing a stop from the vehicle rather than the line. In this case the game appears to create a copy of the line and modifies this copy. Since this is an "information-losing" action, it should require more explicit request from the user.

Finally, I have often found myself wondering where the vehicles associated with a line were located. It would helpful to highlight the vehicles associated with a DO, CO, or line when the building/line's window is focused (similar to how buildings associated with a DO are highlighted; c.f. previous section)

Overlays

The current "overlay" view is great at providing highly-detailed building-level information. However these annotations are not visible when zoomed out, making it difficult to gain a high-level view over the state of the map.

I hope that the newly-announced overlay functionality will help in this regard, hopefully answering high-level questions like:

• are there regions of any of my cities with insufficient power/heating?
  
• do any construction sites have materials missing from their CO assignment?
  
• are any buildings starved for workers (e.g. by showing the fraction (current workers / user-selected worker limit))?
  
• are any buildings have too low of a worker limit (e.g. by showing fraction (worker limit / maximum worker count))?

Buildings list does not show enough worker statistics

Currently the "building" tab of the "List of vehicles and buildings" list only shows the number of present workers, not the user-selectable worker limit nor the building's inherent maximum. This makes it difficult to determine when a building is being underutilized.

As noted above, being able to show the fractions (current workers / worker limit) and (worker limit / building maximum) via the overlay would also be quite helpful.

[GreenCarrots]

Tiresome but perhaps hard-to-solve bugs

These are bugs that are a consistent thorn in the player's side, but may be tricky to solve.

Unpredictable input

Even when framerate and CPU usage are "healthy" I often find that the input events, particularly mouse clicks, are randomly dropped. This quickly becomes tiresome, particularly with how mouse-centric the interface is.

"Stuck" Road construction

The stuck road construction vehicle bug is fairly well-documented at this point. This has bitten me more times than I can count.

The developers have my sympathy; this sounds like a nasty race condition. Solving this sort of issue is difficult without a reliable reproducer. However, when a central game mechanic misbehaves for a new user, it inevitably raises concerns regarding game "polish" and whether it is worthwhile continuing with the title for fear of running into some other, more fundamental bug later in gameplay.

In my own case, I ran into the bug very soon after I started with the game and quickly found reports of other users seeing the same thing. This nearly discouraged me from continuing with the game; I am glad I stuck with it but I'm confident that users have been lost this way.

[GreenCarrots]

Paper-cuts

These are problems that are small annoyances but (likely) easily fixed.

Tool usability

• Introduce a proper distance measuring tool; distance is a critical component of the game; planning without the ability to measure it is like driving blind.
  
  
• The apparent size of some user interface buttons is larger than the mouse-sensitive size. For instance, in the Vehicles list of the distribution office, the top quarter of the visual extent of each button is insensitive
  
  
• The "cancel path"-style tools demand too much precision of the user: To delete a section of road/track/path/power line the user must position the cursor precisely over path, click and hold while moving the cursor to the terminal point of the deletion, which also must sit on the path. This is especially onerous for long paths, which become nearly impossible to delete while zoomed out.
  
  Once a cancel drag has been initiated on a path, the game should map the cursor's position to a point along the path (e.g. to a point intersecting with the path's normal).
  
  
• Deleting many-node paths is onerous. Currently the "cancel path"-style tools will only delete up to the first node. While this is a reasonable behavior in many cases, it should also be possible (e.g. while holding a modifier like Shift) to continue to cancel "through" nodes

Legibility of data presentation

• Confusing whitespace in resource quantity bar graphs. For instance, open the window of a warehouse. The quantity icons representing, e.g., alcohol are closer to the "Food" label than they are to the Alcohol label.
  
  
• The lines indicating power/heat coverage while placing a substation/heat exchanger tend to obscure the area where the building is being placed. Perhaps these lines should be rendered translucently?
  
  
• The "overlay selector" window is large enough to obscure a considerable amount of the map at lower resolutions yet hiding the window also hides the overlays.

General user-interface

• Excessive white-space around windows. When playing at 1920x1080 it is only possible to fit a handful of windows on the screen at a time without obscuring essentially the entirety of the map. Cutting down on the whitespace at the top and bottom of the windows would help
  
  
• The "red-circled-X" button generally means "delete", "remote", or "discard" but is quite overloaded, even within a particular context (e.g. in the case of a vehicle: delete one stop? delete all of the stops? remove the vehicle from the line? delete the line? delete the vehicle itself?)
  
  
• the "magnifying glass" button generally means show more information, although the exact meaning varies by context.
  
  
• A few typos are scattered (e.g. "winter is comming")

[GreenCarrots]

Summary

On the whole SR:WR is an incredibly impressive project given the size of the development team. However, I am certain that I am not alone in playing it despite, not because of, its user interface. I think the original post put it well:

Originally posted by Jo of spanners:

Complexity is fine. But complexity needs an interface and design to help the user manage it, especially new users.

The game currently offers an impressive depth, with a corresponding amount of complexity. However, the interface makes the user pay for this complexity with mouse-clicks and repetition. This detracts from the enjoyment and freedom of planning and problem-solving within that complexity.

Addressing these "infrastructural" issues may not have the immediate appeal of a new vehicle, industry, or game mechanic, but it will significantly improve game-play and make the game accessible to a wider pool of users.

On the bright side, the developers do appear to be recently spending more time on quality-of-life improvements; I sincerely hope this continues. I would personally much rather have any of the above points improved than the addition of militias, helicopters, or new industries.

[ryantheskinny]

Hey thanks for the feedback and for detailing it in such depth despite the limitations of the steam forums message limit :D

[GreenCarrots]

Originally posted by ryantheskinny:

Hey thanks for the feedback and for detailing it in such depth despite the limitations of the steam forums message limit :D

My pleasure. Thanks for such an intriguing game.

If there are any questions about the post do let me know. I would be happy to elaborate or schedule a call if this would be helpful.

[emmy swiff]

Yes this is a very good post. My migraine means I have trouble reading and writing things at the moment, but I'll try and follow up when I can :)

Not only is mouse-exclusive interaction inefficient, but it severely limits play-time for users who struggle with RSI. I have personally had to curtail my playing for this reason.

You and I both. RSI sucks. Having hotkeys for common actions, as you said, would make things easier. Also the hotbar could be improved a lot by making it easier to add things to it. AFAIK the only way to set it up so far is to use the mouse to click through into a special mode and set it all up manually, which is itself quite laborious. I don't think I've ever used the hotbar for more than a few seconds before getting bored. Being able to click and drag an interface icon to a slot would work really well, I think. Or maybe, hold the shortcut number and click? CTRL+shortcut number+click?

Edit: one other thing I forgot: 15 characters is a comically short name length for things in game ;)

[dmfan79]

When looking at expenditures it would be very useful to be able to see which buildings are consuming a specific resource instead of only listing how much money we're spending on it.

[McDee]

Wireframe toggle hotkey would be nice

[GreenCarrots]

Originally posted by dmfan79:

When looking at expenditures it would be very useful to be able to see which buildings are consuming a specific resource instead of only listing how much money we're spending on it.

I agree with this; I have often wanted such a feature in the past. Even simply having an overlay that shows the dollar value of resources purchased by a building in the last month would be great (although I suppose it's likely that this information isn't currently tracked with such granularity).

[Ale is Yum!]

This is a great set of posts. I agree with most of what you've said, including that the game is mesmerising and fascinating (just ask my family). Thanks for taking the time and effort to do this.
I would like to be able to include loan repayments in the monthly income/expenditure. At the moment income can be green, but suddenly a big whack disappears in loan repayments. You can find what they are, but it would be good to include it in the running surplus/deficit line.
I also think there are many functions that should require labour but don't: farms, technical services and a number of other things don't require people, power, or sometimes both.
Somebody also suggested that assets that require vehicle should have attached fuel tanks. You can do this manually by building a petrol station next to it, but that's a bit tedious and unnecessarily uses resources.

[knysper]

I totally agree with the points you have raised. I would however like to add a few words about menu structures, especially the split construction / infrastructure menu.

Many games have one dedicated button to open the construction menu. You want to build something? Fine, you can access all buildings here.

In WR:SR there are currently two construction menus (constructions and infrastructure). That's quite messy and can be rather confusing and unintuitive, especially for new players.
Many buildings appear multiple times in different subsections (like the "dry bulk storage" in "construction->storage&warehouses" and "construction->metalurgy"), some even in subsections of both menus (constructions and infrastructure), for example the "road cargo station".
This way, it's rather difficult to learn where to find a certain building, especially because there is little consistency. For example the "construction->metalurgy" subsection contains all factories for the aluminium production chain (from the bauxit mine to the aluminium plant), but only the steel mill, not the coal / iron mine. They can be however be accessed via the "construction->Gravel/coal/iron" subsection.
This is not only annoying because you have to switch alot between UI pages/subsections, you also make it harder for the player to "learn" how your production chains are working.
Currently these are not too difficult, but who knows what will be added in the future?

I guess the intention once was to avoid cramped UI windows (for example the whole energy stuff consists of many different buildings / wires etc.). Or to have topic related subsections, like "want to produce food? Use this subsection to access all neccessary structures (farms, fields, factories)", but that's not true because you also need factory connections, roads, powerpoles etc. to make it work, so you still have to switch UI pages.

I like the topic related concept, but in it's current state it is not practical.
I personally think it would be better to merge the two menus, maybe in a browser like style.
Let's use "energy" as an example.
If you open the construction menu window, the upper part consists of permanently visible topic tabs/subsections (like "energy") and depending on what you have selected there, the lower part of the window is used to display the related buildings, perhaps again categorised by function. Something like:


(permanent) "Housing" | "Energy" | "Mining" | ...
--------------------------------------------------
(variable function)
"Production" | "Conversion" | "Connection"
--------------------------------------------------
(variable building) (Current building Icons)
"Nuclear Plant", "Coal Plant", "Solar plant", "wind turbine", ...


And if merging is too much to ask for or too complicated, I would at least like some sort of shortcut to switch to related subsections, like from "construction->energy" to "infrastructure->wires". This would be an easy way to avoid unneccessary mouseclicks for navigation.

[GreenCarrots]

I agree with the comments of knysper, McDee. I am also very happy to see some of the points mentioned here are already being addressed in the internal beta.

A few more suggestions:

* It would be nice if there were a consistent keybinding to activate the "accept" button of a dialog (e.g. the assign COs dialog).
* It would be nice if resources left on construction sites (or perhaps more importantly, resources needed) were visible in the resources overlay

Originally posted by pawelkrzyzak:

I wouldn't want it if after clicking on a farm, all fields would have been highlighted,

Note that it isn't necessarily the case that fields would be highlighted if the window is open. Highlighting would only be shown when a window is focused.

[Sir._Captain_Sky_Walker]

This is the BEST city building game on this planet at this point in time. Hands down, no competition. Even skylines is bland in comparison. Maybe pretty, but shallow. Watching the effect of a stuck train on my global index is super awesome, or the difference one cargo wagon can make to the entire supply chain. Making it turn from input starved to output heavy, resulting in a smooth index graph. Love it!

A suggestion -> The ability to hold CTRL or SHIFT when clicking on dates or cargo quantity etc to make it add more or less per click. Like skip a month with CTRL or a year with SHIFT button pressed when clicking on the plus or minus. It would make setting a custom date window when looking at figures/numbers way more easy and less finger numbing. The one place to peruse the effects of changes made is in the numbers. But setting the date is a mission. Also, when opening route cards/vehicles etc, if holding shift or Ctrl to have the GUI cards stack them on top of each other instead of side by side for batch route configuring... at 140,000 population, one can really end up clicking your mouse to death. Also, when adding a new stop on a route, to hold shift when clicking on a new stop to disable auto flip flop between load/unload and make SHIFT set new rout to load and CTRL to unload, if no button is pressed, then flip flop as per usual.. Also if at all possible, to show if wait till loaded/unload is set without having to open the stop on the card. The interface is a bit slow for me and I could do things much faster with that bit of info displayed on the summary part that shows what is being loaded and what %. maybe a little icon of a watch/clock, to indicate the wait till loaded toggle..? PLEASE.

[Fleshbits]

I can't bring myself to play the game the way the streets and walkpaths work. I need more control over curves, height, etc. I'd really like more than one lane, even if civilians are too poor in the theme to make use of them, I have enough trucks going back and forth that I need them.

Same with forklifts and such. I can't begin to figure out how to lay out a meat farm when the factory >>> paths have to all connect in order for the forklift to figure out where to go. What if I could build a street did a small bridge of the fortklife path? Then we'd be cooking.

I guess I am just spoiled by city skylines paths and streets. I found this game to be frustrating in my first 7 hours and decided to put it on the shelf until it became more refined.